Watching
by Cheri Goodman - Heather Wyatt
Summary: Set during Episode 8x24, Secret in the Siege. Booth's thoughts after that phone call in the park, the lie he has to tell, and how it affects his relationship with Brennan. One-shot, with the right reserved to continue as the muse strikes.


**Author's Note:**

 **To those waiting for an update on BAMN…don't shoot me. The next chapter has been a bear to edit, and I had to do this first. Tiny bit of background: I had actually quit watching the show two episodes into the 6th season because I couldn't bear what happened after the 100th. I'm still not watching the majority of season 6 (Ever. No, seriously, NEVER), but have picked up with the beginning of the 7th season when B &B get together and am now watching into the 9th. **

**The Pelant arc has captured my imagination. The muse is screaming for this, and won't let me work on By Any Means Necessary until I get this out of my system. Not an epic like BAMN…not edited and restructured within an inch of its life like BAMN…just a quick little piece that ran through my head and I typed out just as quickly, so don't hold it to those standards.**

 **It is set almost entirely in Episode 8x24, The Secret in the Siege. Does follow canon as shown on the show, but does also fill in some gaps afterward with my own muse. If you like it, please hit that review button. If there's an interest, I'll continue it through to the end of the Pelant arc.**

He watches them - his perfect little family on the blanket in the park.

Still scarcely able to believe they're actually his, even after all this time. Even less able to believe that just a few hours earlier, she not only agreed but actually asked him to make that permanent. With a bag of jerky. The perfect picture of everything he's ever wanted, sitting right there together on one tiny blanket.

Engaged. He's engaged to Bones.

Surreal doesn't really cover it.

He watches everything and everybody else, too, as he stands across the way from them, phone still clutched tightly in his hand, best poker face firmly in place to keep her from realizing who he'd been talking to. To keep her from having any clue what he's - what _they're_ \- being asked to give up.

More than anything, he watches for any sign of Pelant. But he still can't tear his eyes away from the sight when his _fiancée_ lifts her hand to wave at him, a beautiful smile on her face.

Max Keenan, for a change, had been right. Pelant does need killing. He's becoming relatively certain he's going to be the one to do it, too.

He can't stop watching her. Can't let Pelant do this again.

He's already taken them away from him once….for three long months.

Three months that he didn't get to watch them, not for even one single moment.

He doesn't intend to let that happen again.

He'll be watching.

… ooo … ooo …

He watches her - the woman he's loved (and watched) for longer than he'd care to admit.

She's flipping through a bridal magazine. In their home. With a _smile_ on her face. Because she's agreed to marry him.

She may have been the one to do the asking. He doesn't kid himself for one second that it's her agreeing to marry him, and not the other way around.

He almost says the hell with it…Pelant's a psychopath, and killing people is what he _does._ He's going to do it again regardless of what Seeley Joseph Booth does with his personal life. He wants to take this moment and run with it, and never look back.

But she's speaking to him now, talking about their wedding, saying something about white wedding dresses. The imagery hits him square in the gut. And despite the fact that he knows from experience there's not one virginal thing about her, all he can think about in that moment is _keeping_ her pure.

Pure from guilt.

Pure from innocent blood anywhere near her hands.

Pure from helping shoulder _his_ guilt when he sacrifices five innocent lives for his own happiness.

He can't touch her with that.

And so he watches her again, carefully, as he tells her they need to talk.

… ooo … ooo …

He watches her - the proud, resolute woman she's trying to remember how to be in that moment.

His heart breaks a little when she doesn't immediately agree to not marrying him.

 _"But this is what you wanted." "But you didn't." "But I do now."_

It breaks even more when she does.

 _"I'm impressed that you're finally seeing things from my perspective."_

Did he actually say to her that it was just a piece of paper? He _knows_ full well that one piece of paper can have greater meaning than she could begin to fathom.

Because Pelant's death certificate? That will be just a piece of paper too. One he wants nearly as badly.

Nearly. But not quite.

He's watching her…watching the barely restrained tears in her eyes. The barely concealed hurt that he just knows she needs to get far enough away from him to compartmentalize so she can start building her walls.

So he already knows she doesn't want him to order in, because that would entail eating with him. He asks her anyway.

He's been watching the whole time. He already knew the answer.

The only thing that surprised him was that she took the magazine with her when she left him there alone.

Which, God help him, he actually let her do, because…

This time, he's not the only one watching.

… ooo … ooo …

He's watching her - as her footsteps are about to round the corner to carry her upstairs.

Just a few stairs away, and yet he knows it might as well be a million miles.

So he stops her, and the hell with Pelant.

Asks if they're okay.

He's asked her some ridiculous questions in the years he's had the privilege of breathing the same air as her. He knows that, better than anybody. She's a genius. He's not. His mind doesn't always put 2 and 2 together and then automatically make educated computations and brilliant leaps from that simple foundation, conclusions that would put Einstein to shame. He's seen, more times than he can count, that look on her face that in anybody's language other than hers would mean _why the hell do I have to explain this to you?_

But this particular question? It just might top them all.

And yes, he's seen the look she's wearing on her face now before, too… that same too-carefully-composed look when he asks a question she doesn't want to answer. He's been watching for a long time.

And this time? He's still not the only one watching.

Pelant's out there. Maybe he's even _in here._ So he lets her go. Lets her lie through her teeth to him, and disappear.

He doesn't have to be watching to know that she stood in stunned silence on the other side of the wall from him for just a few moments, like he had punched her in the gut. He doesn't have to be watching to know the tears are about to fall.

He doesn't know if he even has the right to watch her anymore. If he will ever get it back.

But he will definitely be watching when Pelant dies.

… ooo … ooo

He watches her - as she sleeps on the farthest edge of the bed away from his side.

Watches in the doorway, for longer than he's watched her in a while now, when he finally approaches their room like he's not sure he belongs there anymore.

He'd watched her for enough years to know she needed some time. That the only thing he could give her tonight was a chance to be asleep when he got there.

And then suddenly he's not watching. He's looking. Looking for something.

He has no idea why. But he wants to know where that bridal magazine is.

He doesn't have to look long. He finds it in the first place he looks. The wastebasket.

After all, he's been watching her a long time.

For once, he checks to be sure that _she_ 's not watching. Reaches in, retrieves it. Because it means something to him, whether Angela was the one who foisted it onto her or not. She had kept it. Brought it home. Gone through it voluntarily. Had been thinking about their wedding looking at it. Tried to talk to him about it.

It's not staying in the trash.

He stares at the cover for a moment…not seeing a model, but seeing Bones in a white dress coming his way.

He truly, honestly would have paid for her hand in giraffes if that's what it took, even if he had to hop a plane to go on safari and capture the damn things himself. It hadn't been a lie. He'd only been about a quarter kidding.

But now he wants _this_. A ceremony. Because she wanted it too, and he'd been watching closely enough that whole day to pick up on that too.

One day, they're going to have that. After he watches the end of Pelant. She's going to walk down the aisle toward him.

And he'll be watching.

 **Author's Note:**

 **Thoughts? Like it? Want one more chapter? I'm kind of dying to do the next episode anyway, so... let me know.**


End file.
